Explains the discrepancy between district letters between you and therealthom here. :)

For what it's worth, Captain Percival was using the Player Notes version and Heward was referring to the Prestige Points subpage, and you referred to Percival's list as "an old file."

Hm, Grand Arch doesn't even have a listing in the alternate version, and I picked both Auriel's and Khismia's penalties there due to their backstories being Grand Arch-related. Where does Grand Arch fit in the subpage list?

Percival's file is an old one, but it is more up-to-date than the subpages. I originally didn't include places like Grand Arch because on an initial reading, they seemed like specific places rather than actual neighbourhoods, but on reinspection, that turned out not to be the case, so they needed inclusion as possible favoured communities and Prestige Districts. Hence, the updated list.

Have updated Prestige and Gear to profile - I only ended up spending 700gp in the end, and am fairly happy with what I have as a start, so am happy to waive the last 300gp of build value (Nazard indicated to build to 1,000gp wealth). Perhaps that reflects the amount he's already lost on the gambling tables in Underbridge?

Appearance:

Phillip clearly has an elfin heritage, evinced more in the slight point to his ears and slight build than anything else. His head is bedecked with a shock of brown hair that is both neat and unkempt as it spills out behind him. His face is handsome without being beautiful... sporting a well manicured mustache beneath sparkling and lively eyes.

His livery consists of colorful swatches of good quality cloth of dark reds and browns and cut in the Varisian style. To a trained eye the tight fitting black studded leather armor is visible beneath his surcoat. At his waist sits a broad bladed cutlass with a solid basket hilt.

He bears some signs of his life at sea, weathered skin and calloused hands. Though he also bears a reminder of his life passed up - his little finger of the left hand is severed at the second knuckle and under his clothes hidden from the world is the worst of it. His back bears the interlaced tracings of a murderously wielded cat-o-nine; and his chest and belly long and hardened scars where a red hot poker was drawn across it.

Bullet Point Background:

Grew up in Riddleport, employed as a serving boy in a dockside tavern.
While there he became enamored with the tales of those who went to sea, high adventure and derring do enchanting the poor wide eyed and gullible lad.
When he came of age he got hired on to a pirate's cutter as a deckhand.
While at sea he quickly learned that dullness and torpor were the general order of the day, and livened up his time with sea shanties and games of dice on the deck.
At first actual seaboard conflict some of the wide eyed idealism was wiped clean from his face. They successfully raided a trader's cutter, taking a heavy load of silks; but the brutality and blood was something he will always remember.
Their ship was subsequently taken by a privateer, who had a particularly sadistic bosun - that reveled in torturing the captive pirates. It was then that his back was scarred and in one extended session with red hot pokers his little finger was mostly taken.
Knowing that to stay was to die, Phil managed to slip his manacles in the night and steal away - taking a few souveniers as he departed.
A long swim and bartered cart ride later, he alighted in Magnimar - a city of new opportunity. Settling back in among the dockside taverns he felt at home once more; tales of the sea more palatable than living it.
However as his coin dwindled quickly from gambling he knew that he needed to find a means of a reputable living. Seeing the flyer from MSI requesting new recruits - he decided to give it a try

I still need to work on the background a bit more - but the gist of what I'm feeling for the character is in there. As always I'm open to DM or other player suggestions on what might be better to modify :)

So where to? It seems folks want to head to the Stone of Seers to look up records on Datedy and Veers, but it's too late in the day for that.

Just go break in. It's quicker to ask forgiveness than permission. I'm sure Captain Percival won't mind. And it's not like a wizard's college would have good security. (If you're lucky, they rely on the village idiots at Guards & Wards.)

Or find out who works in the records office there, track him down, flash your badges, and make him leave his family and dinner and go back and unlock it for you. That's the Heward way.

Speaking as a former student, the Stone never really shuts.... even if the admin staff do have homes to go to. There's usually someone in the library, or hanging around one of the common rooms. The snack bar has a distressing habit of closing around midnight, though. Most of the professors live off-site, but some of the senior students and researchers have rooms there. It's just that the people there probably won't have the information that we are after... although I could start my own library research on that nasty substance.

Oh, I agree completely. It's just that Heward was wanting to look at class lists and other enrollment records. Those offices would be locked up and the workers gone home. Heward could have a great time getting in and talking to all sorts of people who respond with, "Those offices are closed. Come back tomorrow."

The Stone of the Seers is kinda coming to life here... I wonder if anyone has written the school prospectus or a course listing.

Maybe I should, given as I a) like playing academically-inclined mages and b) am a teacher in real life :)

Fill you boots, Megan. I have a few NPCs fleshed out, obviously, but little else about the culture, schedules, etc. Every school has its own unique culture and atmosphere; the Stone of Seers should have no less.

"Veers seemed pretty extreme though. Couldn't a mage put people to sleep as easily as roast them? Or just blink away? Guys like Awgin and me need to make sure the enemy is down, but in the Watch classes we're told to use the minimum of force needed."

Good point. Why would low-level mages not expecting trouble, just going about their everyday routines, even have magic missile or (I'm guessing) burning hands learned, when their spell slots are limited and there are so many utility spells that come in handy throughout the day? I suppose we could assume neither of them had a familiar and both used their bonded object to cast the most potent spell in their spellbook, in their panic. Which raises the question: are only mages without familiars being targeted?

Oddly enough, a previous incarnation of Calatin - playing AD&D 2e, he had the Academician specialty from The Complete Wizard's Handbook - had nodded off in a corner at an auction, I think it was, when someone grabbed him by the shoulder and he let off a burning hands in sheer reflex!

Now the fellow who'd grabbed him was a member of the local Watch and I think they were there to ask awkward questions (to do with some of the stuff the party was selling at the auction), but the reaction was a little extreme and did lead to some gaol time... but that was an adventuring wizard, and one who'd just come back from a dungeon crawl, so at least had some excuse for being jumpy.

Interesting point about familiars, though. Does that mean I'm safe, given that I have Tylluan... when he's not off mousing, that is. Wonder if either of our two victims had familiars?

There has certainly been no mention of familiars, either on or off camera, but nobody has asked, either.

My personal take on the arcane bond is that the bonded item is a new and fresh feature, where as familiars are older and more...familiar. I've never specified in game, but I like the idea that the idea of bonded objects, while certainly not a new thing, are a current fad, and familiars within the college are seen as old-fashioned...if that's okay with Megan.

There has certainly been no mention of familiars, either on or off camera, but nobody has asked, either.

It's probably not in character for it to occur to anyone but Calatin. I certainly couldn't justify Auriel or Khismia asking about it, even if I had a character who could participate in the game thread.

I would be happy to go along with that... I do, as you know, prefer the traditional familiar! It appears that our two victims are more recent graduates of the Stone than I am, so this fad for bonded objects may have come in after my day. Or maybe I'm old-fashioned :)

It's not personal. I'm sure if there was a contact poison that caused stealthy half orcs to go berserk you'd be there to help me out the best way you know how. That's all I'm doing for you. By the way, how are you feeling? Are you a bit irratated or upset in any way right now?

Backing up in time slightly...as you arrived for breakfast, you found Garidan already packed up, his gear on his back, apologizing for the short notice, but he has to go, as an issue with family has arisen. He wishes you the best of luck with the current investigation, and hopes to return soon, though he confesses he has no idea when that will be.

He's obviously gotten a secret promotion to his dream job working with a team of cats and is just letting us down easy.

He watches the big man go. Markiv, then Garidan. It seems the team member he with whom he most identifies always leaves one way or another. Except Minick. Auriel, he corrected himself. No need to be formal now. He didn't identify with her at all. Still he thought it a shame she'd gone. She cared about the people. Especially the hard luck cases who needed the Watch most. Why couldn't she work with the rules? Why did she have to be deliberately insubordinate? The memory still rankled. Maybe if I hadn't lost my temper. Maybe I could have handled it differently.

****

I think I know what's going on with the 3 (4?) tomb raiders, but Heward doesn't qualify for the appropriate knowledge checks.

Vargouilles tend to be a one-man encounter in my experience. Assuming someone makes their save, one vargouille is pretty easily taken out, and in this case in particular, there's no room for more than one person to even get at it. If the other two start shrieking, things get a lot more interesting.

therealthom wrote:

On the other hand Awgin may solve the fracas in the hall ....

Pssh. You've got an armed stranger running down the hall toward us. Sure, he claims he's a friend of Mrs. Brigglespan's, but for all we know, he's already tied her up and stuffed her under the desk. You people are all so trusting.... ;P

Pssh. You've got an armed stranger running down the hall toward us. Sure, he claims he's a friend of Mrs. Brigglespan's, but for all we know, he's already tied her up and stuffed her under the desk. You people are all so trusting.... ;P

I would pay real money to be able to see him try that...

Ask Navior. The last old lady NPC I made favored a scorpion whip and had levels in assassin by the end of the game. Of course, that was a different old lady NPC...

Yeah, that's what I'm saying: Awgin's got the only threat taken care of from atop the table, and no one else has any room to help him out due to the vargouilles-to-be on either side of the flying head. If the other two turn before he swats this one, then there'll be an opportunity for someone else to do something.

While it would be nice to role-play every minute of every day, I think we can assume that people have introduced themselves to Khismia off camera, just like we can assume that other details you insist never get mentioned, like personal details and things about each other also were presented. We don't need to rehash all that stuff in game because we can just read up on it in people's backgrounds, but I find it strange that you keep insisting that nobody in the entire building ever talks about themselves, or even to each other, if it doesn't happen in the game thread. Unless people explicitly state that they refuse to talk to Auriel or Khismia or anybody else, or ever tell them anything, why not just assume that friendly people are being friendly when we're not looking?

For one thing, I don't think we can assume that at all. Awgin, for example, has refused to share anything about his past even when he's been asked about it. Which is fine. He's not a "friendly" character. Khismia hasn't told anyone anything about her past, either, because she's naturally distrustful. Laya's backstory is purposefully mysterious; I'm not sure even Navior knows the answers to all her enigmas. Unless I specifically spell out that my character is telling someone her life story (in any game), I don't presume that anyone will know it, nor do I assume I know anyone else's deep dark secrets unless they explicitly say they're filling me in.

And the getting-to-know-you fluff when PCs meet each other, or a new PC joins the game, isn't just fluff. It determines how the PCs relate to each other. If we just "skip over all that" because it's boring or takes too long or whatever, I'm left flailing with how to play my character. If I don't know what kind of relationship my PC has with any individual other character, I don't know if we're friends or rivals or kindred spirits or two people who grate on each other's nerves despite their best efforts or what, and I don't know what to say or how to say it.

Maybe that's been my issue this whole time. It seems like everyone's expected to have a working relationship with no personal feelings underlying it. We're just a bunch of strangers dumped in a room and told to go do a job but there's no time to spend actually getting to know one another. We're just supposed to pretend we did all that off-camera and are all good friends now who never speak to one another about anything but business. To me, working out the interpersonal relationships is the whole reason to play the game; leveling up and accomplishing goals are secondary to the fun of playing a character among other characters with their own preferences and agendas that don't match up with my own. It's what made Baldur's Gate better than Icewind Dale, where the whole party is totally unanimous on every course of action.

If the starting philosophy is "strangers meet up and form a motley crew," then we need a chance to get to know each other in-character. The other alternative is to start up on the assumption that the party all already know each other, and then you work out common backstories in the OOC thread so relationships are determined before the game starts. It feels like we're stuck in the middle here: strangers that are automatically a well-oiled machine, and I can't wrap my head around it.

Then get to know them! Have a character talk to people with a tone other than, "You're the oppressive establishment and I need to stick it to the man! Everything you seem to believe in is foolish and you're doing it all wrong, so I'm going to go off on my own and sleep with random wizard students and refuse to ever hang out with you to give you a chance to get to know me in the first place."

Or don't. Both are fine and perfectly valid. Just don't make a character that you decide would never want to get along or work with the other people there, go out of her way to avoid getting to know them, and then complain out of character when there isn't a unifying bond of brotherly love among all the PCs.

The whole point in starting out was that you don't have the chance to get to know one another, and so have to create the working relationship on the fly as you investigate the first case, and that happened a fair bit. Awgin and Laya established a great dynamic right off. The problem is that we keep having to replace characters, which means starting over all the time. But then there is down time, like at the Cenotaph Arms for everybody to get to know each other. We kept going with that for awhile, and when the posting lagged, we moved on. I'm quite content to have extended get-to-know you sessions, as they're quite fun, and definitely important, but once the interest seems to have waned, I'm moving on. We have a new PC now, so plenty of excuse to get to know each other again.

Well, Khismia's a jerk. We already knew that. We established that going in. And it could be that people are aware of the fact that she's never going to fit in with the party ooc so they're not going to even bother to try to broker a relationship with her, which is fair enough. In addition, Khismia doesn't have a room at HQ and clearly doesn't belong there so it's not like she has any downtime to spend with the others. She's there on a strictly business basis. And I don't know if therealthom is bending over backwards due to what happened with Auriel, but the fact that he keeps giving her instructions that equate to "Go with them, or go with them, or, heck, I don't care, just go home and do your own thing" doesn't help. I built Khismia specifically as someone who obeys orders and doesn't take initiative. If she doesn't have any orders, she doesn't have the imagination or the inclination to think of something helpful to do on her own. She'll just ... sit there.

Auriel, though, I think you're being totally unfair to. Up until Heward's come-to-Erastil meeting, she repeatedly reached out to multiple party members. My gosh, she slept with the half-orc with the 7 Cha! How much less avoiding of the rest of the party could she be? She had absolutely no problem working with anyone until she was suddenly told that when Heward said 'jump' she had to ask 'how high?' Go back and check the thread. She spent half of one night in Lowcleft after almost dying. When she did sleep with Lyeban, it was at HQ, not "going off on her own."

Apart from getting insulted by Garidan when she was trying to work out a way to let the party know what information she uncovered and he told her her skills were unnecessary, no one ever had a problem with her until Markiv died. And then when she was facing an existential crisis and trying desperately to explain why all the ritual around death made her uncomfortable and terrified, she just got yelled at for being self-centered and heartless. It wasn't due to her "avoiding the party" but due to her trying to make connections to the party that she got rebuffed. And, yeah, at the point that people started telling her how selfish she was for not toeing the party line at the funeral, she went looking for comfort in Lowcleft, not having found it at MSI. Even then, she didn't go back to Lyeban; she turned to Awgin, a PC. I think you're letting her reaction at an early-morning meeting, when she was hung-over and had just gotten the brush-off from a half-orc, color your impression of the whole character.

My issue is not with either character at all, and no single scene in the story to date. I don't have a problem with players wanting to make a character who sets to not gel with the others. You admitted as much when considering whether to retire Auriel or not, that you hoped Auriel would find a common ground, or way to fit in, and it just didn't happen, and all that even is still fine. My only issue is having a character who disrupts the inter-party dynamic, and then (complaining isn't the right word because I know you're not really complaining, but that's what it comes across as) when the party doesn't have as much cohesion as you think it should.

I guess it's just that I'm not sure what the interparty dynamic actually is, after all this time. I don't think it's as simple as saying everyone's "friendly" and enjoying each other's company when the cameras are off. Laya and Calatin are are pleasant as can be but detached; Awgin's purposefully anti-social, spending his time gardening rather than fraternizing; and Heward's well-meaning but officious, and his promotion has just increased the distance between him and the rest of the party. No matter how much you like your boss, you're probably going to spend your off-work hours hanging out with co-workers on your own level and twitting him good-spiritedly behind his back rather than having a beer with the guy who gives you orders and writes your performance review.

Honestly, if I'd gone with the IA officer, part of my goal for the character would have been to be so awful to everyone that they all found themselves more united as a group in opposition to Internal Affairs. If that could have sparked more comradeship amongst the party, it probably would have been the better character to run, but I just couldn't bring myself to face the prospect of months of being mean to Calatin. (She would have made sure Heward's daily calisthenics became a reality and fired the chef if he wouldn't agree to stop making pastries and start serving vegetable trays until the tubby wizard made weight.)

In short, my question isn't "Why don't you like me?" (the answer should be fairly obvious in Khismia's case) but "Why do you like each other? How does everyone on this team fit together, not just on a professional level but a personal one?"

Jade Regent:

Jade Regent is another issue entirely. The dice have destroyed every idea I had for integrating Corinna with the party. She was meant to discover how useful her arcane study proved in the field and get excited about the idea of becoming an adventurer; instead, thanks to her failure to roll a to-hit in double digits and Navior's failure to roll a save lower than 18, all she's learned is how out of her element she is in the field and how useless to a party of adventurers. Everyone can lie to make her feel better all they want, but it's objectively true that the group could have taken a level-1 commoner with them and fared as well or better than they did with Corinna. And it's odd being the only PC with a family and home of her own in Sandpoint. I even tried to stage a blow-up with her uncle so she'd end up moving into the Rusty Dragon with the rest of you, but Navior played Uncle Belven as conciliatory when she went to confront him, so I presume the DM wants her still at stately Valdemar manor.

But, yeah, at this point, she has as little reason to travel with the rest of the party as they do to want her along. She had a nice moment with Tevyn in the cave, but I can just imagine how well she's going to react to find out he has a thing for the girl she's been jealous of for the last decade. Add to that her utter failure to make any kind of impression at all on Sandru, and ... yeah. Unless Navior has something up his sleeve, I have no clue what to do with her. I assure you, you're no less frustrated with the character than I am myself.

There's a possibility that the addition of Phillip may be a catalyst to clarify some of those feelings as far as interparty relationships go.... as long as he gets a few conversations without crossbows pointing at him ;)

... And I don't know if therealthom is bending over backwards due to what happened with Auriel, but the fact that he keeps giving her instructions that equate to "Go with them, or go with them, or, heck, I don't care, just go home and do your own thing" doesn't help. I built Khismia specifically as someone who obeys orders and doesn't take initiative. If she doesn't have any orders, she doesn't have the imagination or the inclination to think of something helpful to do on her own. She'll just ... sit there.

Ironic. Auriel didn't like orders, but Heward felt entitled to give them because she was in the watch. Khismia is built to take orders, but Heward doesn't feel entitled to give her some because she's the Princess' rep. So his inclination is to let her do as she pleases. A word or two from her on "taking a more active role " or "working more closely", etc might get him to be more definitive when he addresses her.

Heward's other party relationships: (Let me know if I have any of this wrong from all your PC's perspectives.)

I think we can assume that Awgin and Heward are bonding during training. Boys in the gym don't need heart-to-hearts.

Heward's got a soft spot for Laya because she's a halfling. And he's grateful that she's patched up the team. They also did some interviewing together on the first case and got some good information so he recognizes her effectiveness in that sphere. And she's training too. He liked her better before he was sargent, because he feels like he has to pick up after some of her verbal gaffes. I find her wonderfully off the wall.

Calatin -- he's a tough nut. So different from Heward. I don't see much personal interaction between them, beyond the respect Heward has for Calatin's expertise.

Phillip remains to be seen.

***

On the subject of RP realtionship building. In stories or TV, the stakeout is the prominent place where personal information gets shared. Travel is another place. And the Cenotaph Arms for us. I'd like to do more in those areas, but everyone would have to accept a slower pace to the story arc.